For Christmas, we'd like Jerusalem, no returns necessary

December 22, 9:52 AMSpiritual Life ExaminerRabbi Ben Kamin

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Given that this is a season of the “wish list,” let me offer, on behalf of my people, that we’d like the gift of Jerusalem.  This would be easy enough to offer on the part of the rest of the world—the city was founded and developed by Jewish kings and priests three thousand years ago, it has never served as the capital of anything but two Jewish commonwealths ever since, and it has functioned as a unified city (for the past 41 years) only in Jewish hands.

The administration of the whole city of Jerusalem by Israel was instigated by the Jordanian shelling of the western “Israeli side” in June, 1967—as Israel was responding to yet another massive Egyptian / Syrian build-up and openly published threats on the part of the Arab world to exterminate the Jewish state.  (Americans are now well-acquainted with the standing Islamic intention to wipe out the American way of life and faith).

The Jordanians had forcefully occupied the eastern section of the venerated city since 1949—for those who like to bandy the term “occupation” in association with the state of Israel.  The good people who lived there were Jordanian citizens, and placed Jordanian license plates on their cars.  I saw this myself when I visited the reunified city just weeks after the Six Day War in 1967.  I’ve seen a city grow dramatically in infrastructure, skyline, cultural institutions, tourism, and prestige during my many visits since.  Israel has to address some significant disparities in housing, schools, and social services that plague some Arab neighborhoods, just as New York has to rebuild its ghettos, Amsterdam has to clean up its rampant drug addiction, Beijing has to make its air breathable, and Teheran has to let women walk about the city in comfortable clothing and without male chaperones.

In the category of spirituality, Israel, since 1967,  has maintained access to the holy sites of all faiths in Jerusalem, while dealing with Islamic suicide bombings, the looming Iranian nuclear threat, the sudden Palestinian claim to Jerusalem as its capital (even though Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran and is third in sanctity for Muslims after Mecca and Medina) and the incongruous (oil-drenched) failure of other democratic nations to recognize Jerusalem as the federal capital of the only democracy in the region.  This, in spite of the fact that Israel turned over control of the Temple Mount to the Wakf—the Moslem Religious Trust.  This, in spite of the fact that during the Jordanian occupation from 1949 to 1967, the Jewish Quarter was ransacked, Jewish cemeteries violated, and Arab snipers routinely shot at Jewish residents on the “other side.”

But there is no “side” to this.  Jesus changed the world from Jewish Jerusalem. With some 500 references to the city in the Hebrew Scripture, dating as far back as Abraham, no logical conclusion exists other than that Jerusalem is a Jewish city and has been for far longer than Washington, DC is capital of the United States.  This is as certain as the fact that on Christmas morning, the electricity will flow and the plumbing will work in a special city that needs management as much as it inspires prayer.